ACD systems also referred to as telemarketing centers or call centers, are systems that enable a pool of agents to serve incoming and/or outgoing calls. With the calls being distributed and connected to whichever of the agents happens to be available at the time. When no agents are free and available to handle additional calls, additional incoming calls are typically placed in a holding queue to await agents becoming available. It is common practice to divide the pool of agents into a plurality of groups, commonly referred to as splits, and to assign different types of calls to different splits. For example, different splits may be designated to handle calls pertaining to different client companies, or calls pertaining to different products or services of the same client company. Each split has its own incoming-call queue. In addition, to the agents associated with a split, each split has an assigned supervisor whose responsibility is to assure that the split functions against given criteria.
Furthermore, some large companies find it effective to have a plurality of call centers, each for handling calls within a different geographical area, for example. Each call center, or each split within each call center, typically has its own incoming-call queue. In a multi-queue environment, it can happen that one call center or split is heavily loaded with calls and has a full queue of calls waiting for an available agent, while another call center or split may be only lightly overloaded, and yet another call center or split may not be overloaded at all and actually may have idle agents. To alleviate such inefficiencies, some call centers have implemented a capability whereby, if a call center for handling a particular call is heavily loaded and its queue is overflowing with waiting calls, the call center evaluates the call load of other call centers to determine if one of the other splits or call centers is less busy and consequently may be able to handle overflow calls and do so more promptly. The overflow call is then queued to the first such backup call center that is found instead of being queued within the call center that received it. Such arrangements are known by different names, one being "look ahead interflow". The control of how calls are processed in a ACD system is done for example in the Lucent Technologies ACD systems by program instructions (also referred to as scripts) that are stored in vectors with each split having its own vector. The instructions within a vector allow the customer the ability to customize the operation of their ACD system without resorting to contacting the manufacturer.
Whereas, the ability to do look ahead interflow does allow one call center to automatically transfer incoming calls to another call center, it does not provide a mechanism for alerting a supervisor of a split or off duty agents of a split to an undesired condition on the split. A supervisor does have access to a supervisor's terminal that allows the ACD system to supply the supervisor information concerning the operation of the split. However, this forces the supervisor to remain at their terminal to receive such information. It is highly desirable for the supervisors to be able to roam about the call center and even take short breaks.
The problem then is that a supervisor of the split needs to have mobility and yet be informed of undesired operating conditions of the split.